Polk Township matricide: Son was mad at mom's rules, cops say

"You're going to rot in hell, Christopher," Carol Curtis of Effort told the man charged with fatally choking and then stabbing his mother — her friend.

ANDREW SCOTT

"You're going to rot in hell, Christopher," Carol Curtis of Effort told the man charged with fatally choking and then stabbing his mother — her friend.

A handcuffed Christopher Strachn, 21, offered no reply, keeping his eyes downcast as a state trooper placed him in the back of a police car after a preliminary hearing Monday.

"You took the best thing off this earth," Curtis told Strachn as her tears came.

Strachn told police he killed his mother, Adrienne Strachn, 53, in their Effort home because he didn't like her rules and because she verbally abused him, Trooper Joseph Campbell of the state police Lehighton barracks testified during the hearing.

At the end of the hearing, Snydersville District Judge JoLana Krawitz found the prosecution had presented sufficient evidence to send a criminal homicide charge against Christopher Strachn to county court.

Strachn said nothing as he sat beside his attorney, Fred Cutaio, during the hearing, at times making sudden, quick nods with his head or looking suddenly to his left. Adrienne Strachn's friends, having attended her burial Monday morning in Stroudsburg, sat quietly behind him, at times looking at him with grief-worn eyes.

Early on the morning of June 13, Christopher Strachn called 911 and said he had choked his mother in their Creek Drive home in Pleasant Valley Estates and that he believed she was dead. Police arrived and found Adrienne Strachn dead on the kitchen floor with blood under her body and a broken kitchen knife handle and blade nearby.

Campbell testified Christopher Strachn told them the following while in custody:

He and his mother were home alone in the house they shared with his father and siblings. She finished making beef stew and told him to come and get it.

That's when he walked up behind her, put her in a choke hold and wrestled her to the ground, at which point he stabbed her twice in the back with a kitchen knife. One of the stab wounds was to her right shoulder area.

Monroe County Coroner Bob Allen testified that a Lehigh Valley forensic pathologist, who later performed the autopsy on Adrienne Strachn, gave his medical opinion confirming she had been choked and then stabbed.

Christopher Strachn told police he left the kitchen after killing his mother and pondered suicide, but instead went back into the kitchen about an hour later and "massaged her back," according to Campbell.

If this is true, he must have turned her over afterward because police later found her on her back, as shown in photos taken at the scene, Campbell said.

Strachn told police he had been thinking about killing her and other family members for some time, Campbell said. He said he had "pumped himself up" to kill his eldest sister, but never went through with it.

"It's devastating," Curtis' tearful husband, Jerry Sookbersingh, said after the hearing. "Adrienne was like an angel to us. She was such a wonderful person. This was uncalled for. Christopher hasn't shown any remorse."

Friends of the family have said Adrienne Strachn insisted on having her mentally ill son live at home instead of in an institution.

Christopher Strachn told police he was on different medications for his illness and had taken medication prior to killing his mother, Campbell said. When cross-examined by the defense, Campbell said he didn't recall Strachn saying he had needed a neurological exam prior to the murder.

Strachn remains incarcerated in Monroe County Correctional Facility without bail.